I'd like this confirmed as well. There's no hard evidence on the web I've found that neither confirms nor denies trim support on striped or spanned volumes using dynamic disks in Windows. A lot of people think its enabled, providing the driver used is in AHCI mode, but no one has provided a benchmark like how Anand did with this article to prove one way or the other.

A confirmation on this would be extremely helpful, as dynamic disks are incredibly easy to use and are hardware agnostic. Their only caveats are not being able to install OS on them, and them being native to windows only.Reply

Yes -- TRIM does work with Dynamic Disks.The problem is you can't BOOT from a Dynamic Disk stripe (RAID 0) -- you can only boot from a Mirror (RAID 1).

And also -- even setting up a Bootable Dynamic Disk RAID1 is a PITFA -- you have to first install windows, then convert the disk to dynamic, then add a mirror, then reboot and hope it works. Why don't they just let you set this up from the installer!?

Also, in my experience -- Dynamic Disk mirroring is rather flaky.

The performance is OK -- I find RST to have better READ performance (random and sequential) in general with two 830s in an SSD RAID1 compared to Dynamic Disks-- but if you pull drives during I/O, sometimes Windows just hangs -- other times it works. With the Intel RST I can pull drives all day long and my system stays working just fine (aka there's ACTUAL redundancy here).Reply

You wrote it like 7 series motherboard requirement was a software limitation rather than hardware. If this is the case, I am sure someone will modify the drivers and allow it to work on 6 series motherboards.

...and for that matter, what about those of us still on 5 series chipsets? My X58 setup has hung on tenaciously over the past few years while I wait for Haswell...would be a shame to only be able to run my one 830 (over SATA2, even) for the next year and miss out on the cheap performance boost a RAID 0 setup would offer.Reply

Correct -- this is because for the most part -- the SSD controllers are actually more efficient at small random reads and writes than actual RAID controllers (even a $1000 LSI MegaRAID card) -- be it hardware OR software. Reply

I thought another requirement for TRIM on the 7-series platform is the presence of the RAID BIOS (Option ROM) version 11.5 or newer?! If thats the case, you have to be lucky to get a decent BIOS update from your board manufacturer which includes this.

It seems that X79 chipsets/boards will get RAID TRIM using Intels RSTe drivers later this year: www.hardwarecanucks.com/news/storage-news/intels-trim-support-for-raid-configurations-coming-soon-to-x79/Reply

...more SATA III 6Gbs slots to attach drives to. Far too many 3Gbs, not enough 6 Gbs. In a world where we're going to installing multiple SSD's to get us some pooled goodness, we needs moar of the highest of the high speed SATA ports.Reply

I couldn't agree more. I have a total of 10 SATA ports in my system (Z68 + two PCIe x1 SATA 6Gbps cards) but I would use more if I could. Kind of disappointing that the X79 didn't have more SATA ports in the end.Reply

I don't believe that the X79 chipset would be included in this. The X79 chipset is a Cougar Point PCH, as evidenced by the fact that it does not have USB 3.0 built into it. Cougar Point is the 6-series PCH.Reply

Can you create a SSD array and use it for caching? Or even more complicated... Can I make a RAID0 with 2 120GB SSDs, and use 200GB for an OS installation and the rest to cache the mechanical drives?Reply

"The only negative here is that Intel is only offering support on 7-series chipsets and not on previous hardware. That's great news for anyone who just moved to Ivy Bridge and has a RAID-0 array of SSDs, but not so great for everyone else. A lot of folks supported Intel over the past couple of years and Intel has had some amazing quarters as a result - I feel like the support should be rewarded. While I understand Intel's desire to limit its validation costs, I don't have to be happy about it."

Couldn't agree with you more there. Feels like the same shaft that Intel gave to us P67 users with Intel SRT. Artificially limiting it to only Z68 chipsets, later only making an exception if you happened to own an Intel branded P67 motherboard. Leaving all other partners/customers (Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, etc.) out to dry.Reply

In principle no. The X79 platform uses Intel's Rapid Storage Technology Enterprise (RSTe) drivers, and to my knowledge they don't support his feature. The C600 / X79 chipset also dates back to the 6 series chipset, so it's a good question as to whether they will bring this functionality to the X79 platform.

There could be a way to try and see if it work: some people have manually and forced the installation of previous versions of RST's driver only, and claimed that they worked and actually provided better performance than Intel's RSTe. So, if someone is willing to try, it would be interesting to see if this new version will also work, and especially if TRIM works in RAID-0 SSD arrays.

For those interested, Intel did release a new version of RSTe, version 3.2.0.1135, which can be downloaded from here:

I can confirm that two of the bugs mentioned in the release have been solved. It now reports my system as being in AHCI mode instead of RAID, and the Intel's SSD Toolbox, along with other utilities that read S.M.A.R.T. data, like HD Tune, can now report that data, and you can run Intel's SSD Optimizer.

Just a note: the version installed is 3.2.0.1126, instead of the package version 3.2.0.1135, which is eventually the version for the C600 chipset. This difference in version numbers was already there in the previous version.Reply

You write that RAID-1 should already be supported but I have seen no mention of this anywhere else and in the documents released by Intel about this a long time ago they where only speaking about RAID-0 support

I tried this on an Intel Q87 board and the latest Intel drivers from August 2013 and trimcheck says there is no TRIM on the RAID1 volume while there is working TRIM on the single boot SSD. Strangely though trimcheck also says there is no TRIM when the two RAID SSDs are configured as RAID0...

Very sad the state of TRIM so many years after it became available. Intels RSTe driver for server boards (and the X79) does officially support TRIM in RAID1 though - I will test this soon.Reply

Right now I'm using two Intel 330 180G as a boot raid0 and two 2TB HDD as raid1 storage. This uses all the internal connections so the DVD is eSATA on top of my mITX Shuttle box...with a Asus P8Z787-I Deluxe MB. Sweet. with dual 180Gb SSD's it borders on making the 2Tb raid1 kind of optional.....around 335Gb's is almost enough for a system...almost.

My 1156 Intel mITX mb has 5, yes, 5 internal connections with a software raid bios. it also has a 5x chipset so TRIM is a no-go. Hoping for Intel to show some love for older mb's, time will tell.

After reading this article I setup a Raid-0 array (2 x 240GB Intel SSD 520) on my system (Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H). I'm running Intel RST 11.6.0.1030 which supportsTrim. But what about Intel's Solid-State Drive Toolbox? That program contains a "Intel SSD Optimizer" which, when I try to run, says: "The selected drive is part of a RAID array. This feature is not supported on a RAID member." This optimizer is supposed to optimize the SSD using TRIM. Any thoughts?Reply